


Born In The USA

by ACometAppears



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Blood, Brainwashing, Gen, Gore, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mind Control, PTSD, Panic Attack, Scratching, Violence, not my usual writing style but who's counting eh, possible self-harm, shameless angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 08:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2421749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACometAppears/pseuds/ACometAppears
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier manages to break free from Hydra's hold just once during his time as their weapon. He knows where he needs to go, but he doesn't know why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Born In The USA

**Author's Note:**

> I've been trying to work up this idea into a fic for literally months and here's what I ended up with after much lying down and staring at the ceiling. 
> 
> This is based on actual 616-canon events i.e. Bucky did escape from his handlers once. However, it was during the 70s, and he had different handlers, and the circumstances were a little different etc. so I've changed it for the mcu. 
> 
> Proceed with caution/read the warnings, you know the drill. Enjoy!!

Blue. 

Warm blue. 

Cold blue. 

Warm blue. 

Not warm to touch, but warm blue. Not ice. Water. Not ice. 

He blinks, his eyes wide and bulging. He wants a closer look into the blue. He can’t handle all the other colours right now. It’s too much. He doesn’t want to get lost. Or maybe he does. 

He’s as close as he can get without getting wet, so he reels back, slightly. There’s a further expanse of warm blue. Warm blue. Not ice. There’s a pink stain, on the water. 

This death looks accidental. This death was not accidental. 

A gentle noise whistles past his ear – he almost flinches, and falls into the warm blue (not ice), because it sounds how a bullet sounds. Only gentler. 

It is wind. Not man-made, by a bullet – natural. As nature intended. Just wind. Not a bullet. He’s never felt the wind much before. It’s not even wind. It’s small-wind. Gentle. He doesn’t know the word for it. 

He’s on his knees. The ground is hard on his knees, despite the knee-pads. Tiles. Not white. Beige tiles, not clean. Not surgical. Not white. Not the theatre. 

Nothing about this is familiar: not ice, not bullets, not beige tiles. He feels as if he’s – _experiencing_ something he was not meant to. Something buzzes in in the background, and it’s not a bone-saw. It’s noises. It’s music – maybe it’s a code. But he doesn’t remember this particular code. He is afraid he forgot something he was supposed to remember – a signal he was supposed to heed. 

But searching himself, searching his memory, he knows it is just a song. It is not a code. He is sure of it. It talks about being born in the USA. 

The USA. American soil. American blue, American wind, American tiles, American songs. America. The United States of America, the year of our Lord 19 

19 

40 

40 

3 

5 

3 

2

557

038

. . . That is not the year. They have told him about the radio. The radio, as it is not – not as it was before. 

_Before? . . . Before what?_

He stands abruptly, still staring at the pink stain. It was once a man. Maybe he was too, once. He’s not sure. He doesn’t feel like one. He is not pink. His hands are not pink. They are made of black material, and articulated silver metal. There is nothing underneath. There is nothing left but the mission. 

. . . Then why would he even be able to question it? . . . Why would he even ask, if he was a man, once? 

It’s too much to wish for. There is nothing underneath. He is hollowed out, and orders are placed inside him. In place of his liver, damage limitation. In place of his spleen, defensive combat. Instead of his stomach, sniper techniques and procedures. Instead of his heart, murder. These are almost physical things. They fill him up inside, like compressed poison gas. They must escape one way or another. 

They tell him how, and when, to let them out. That must have been what happened here. He has a flesh-memory of holding this man’s head under the water; of cracking it against a tile (not white, not surgical, not the theatre). The man is overweight, and asthmatic, and has a family history of heart disease. They told him this. 

He wonders if it can be classed as a flesh-memory, if he is made of metal, and black material. He is not flesh and bone. He is not a man. This person is no longer a man, either. 

He held his head under the water, blank-faced, even as the warm blue – not ice – covered his face, getting in his eyes, coating his cheeks and chin, and the black material. The metal squeezed the man’s head, holding his hair tight, but not pulling any out, so as not to leave a trace. It took five minutes to confirm the kill. The senator is dead. 

Splash. Whir. Click. Click. Click. He is gone forever. The mission is complete. The extraction point is set. Codename: Winter Soldier can be put back in stasis. 

. . . Born in the USA. I was born in the USA, the song says to him. I was born in the USA, it repeats. He stares at the radio, and wants to hold it under the water. This is not what he had planned. He did not mean to be aware. He did not mean to question or be conscious of himself. He did not have a plan, before. And yet now, he does – the plan involves . . . It . . . 

32557038\. The plan involves leaving. Staying here, in the USA – I was born in the USA, it tells him – but leaving them. Getting away before they can see him. Getting to be somewhere else. 

-

He is more comfortable with jumping onto trains than with boarding them like a target might. He thinks he has killed on trains before. He has been on trains before. He knows this. 

But trains are different now. They are metal, and material, like him, but also plastic. He has acquired a new make-up from the target’s possessions. He has acquired  
\- one jacket, green, over-large and ideal for the concealment of weapons  
\- one duffel bag, black, stocked with all weapons unable to be concealed by the coat  
\- one memory, geographical, unconfirmed, untrustworthy, non-ignorable

Inventory. Jacket, bag, memory. He did not acquire a ticket. He will hide. 

Entering the body of the train after jumping onto the back of it is incredibly easy, but then it’s a civilian train, and no one is expecting him. No one ever expects him. They all beg though. Without fail. 

He swallows back a sudden obstruction in his throat, as he keeps his head down: he doesn’t make eye contact with the other passengers. He cannot face their faces. He cannot see their eyes. He cannot let the Americans in. He cannot let them win. 

Born in the USA, the song said. I was born in the USA. 

He hears the words in all sorts of orders despite the fact that no one said them. There is no radio here. Only an announcement of some kind. It is not in his head, because others also react to it. He is pleased. He is going to the right place. But he does not trust the memory. 

He checks facts. He confirms kills. He is not curious, he is performing his primary function. 

This is not his primary function. 

He seals himself inside. The door locks, and he feels contained. Usually the ice burns him but he has learned to endure it. He is having too many thoughts and he requires confinement. 

He uses the black material hand to cover one ear, and presses the other ear up against the filthy wall. He uses the articulated metal hand to cover his eyes. He can see blackness. He can hear the rush of the train. It is over-loud and it drains out all thoughts. 

Born in the USA. The train rumbles. Born in the USA. His teeth chatter inside his mouth, as the wall makes his jaw clatter and shake and vibrate. It is not the kind of hurt he inflicts, but that is inflicted upon him. Slow, drawn-out, haunting, and insistent. Not sharp, or over quickly. 

He does not like it. He is used to it. He requires it. There are too many thoughts. They cloud his judgement. He presses his head into the wall harder to block out the chords and the straining vocals. I was born in the USA. 

Someone beats at the door. They ask to come in. No one is allowed in. 

Someone beats at the door. They try the lock. Of course it will not open. He only tried it the first few weeks. 

Someone beats at the door. They cannot get in. They will use the one in the next carriage. 

Someone beats at the door. He should wait until he’s off the train to shoot up. His kid wants to pee. 

Someone beats at the door. _Bucky!_ He thinks, and suddenly wants the journey to be over very, very quickly. He does not like being trapped with himself, even through necessity, like this. He thinks up things that are not real. They are detrimental. 

Someone beats at the door. Sir, what is taking so long? We have reached our last stop. 

He unfolds himself, feeling not renewed, but recalibrated. Not fresh, but aligned. He has a clear task, though he is consciously unsure of what it is. 

-

Escaping is as easy as infiltrating. No one is aware of how much danger they are in. It is laughable. He does not know what laughter is, other than a function of detecting  
\- inebriation  
\- nervousness  
\- a tell  
\- a distraction tactic

He is unsure. Not lost, but everything is unfamiliar. His feet are made of leather and laces and hidden blades, but they act independently of thought. He watches as they carry him away. Things are different. Perhaps compared to a previous mission. 

He has never been here before, in his memory, and it is completely unfamiliar. But it is home. It is uncanny. 

The leather and laces and hidden blades take him to 5th and Morris. He knows because it says so on the side of a building that has a memorial tablet. He has not read anything other than a mission briefing for a long time. Before that it was just a list of those he could trust. And those he cannot. 

He cannot recall their names or faces anymore. But they are deeply engrained within him. 

When he steps closer he can see there are flowers by the fire escape (easy get away, easy point of access, easy location for a fake suicide or staged falling accident) beside the plaque. 

He steps up and he can see the flowers better. He can smell them now. The smell of chemicals from the warm blue is stuck in his nostrils. He cannot name the small-wind that pushes gently but insistently at his head, moving his hair as it does so, but he can name each of the flowers. 

There are many sunflowers. There are daffodils. There are forget-me-nots. None of them are poisonous or conduits for potentially poisonous diseases or toxins. They are harmless. 

They are forget-me-nots. 

They say thank you, and thank you Cap, and thank you for saving my daughter, and thank you for helping me, and sorry I didn’t take orders at first, I was just so caught up, you’re a great guy, you saved us all, thank you Cap, thank you Cap, thank you Cap, thank you Cap, welcome home Cap, welcome home, welcome home

Welcome home

He stays until dark. He cannot say why. That scares him more than injury or being frozen: he knows those things and they are his life. His current situation is an unwelcome yet unavoidable voyage into the unknown. 

He reads the plaque repeatedly until the street light comes on and it is too dark to defend himself and he does not feel safe to stand with obscured vision in a place so open. 

_The former home of Steven Grant ‘Captain America’ Rogers and his childhood friend, James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes. In memoriam._

Someone has added another plaque. 

_The Steven G. Rogers Museum of Wartime History._  
Opening times: Mon – Sat 9:00 – 17:00  
Closed Sunday  
NEW EXHIBIT: Captain America and The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes 

He feels as if he is missing something. 

He is missing something from his memory. He is missing the main point of the unreliable memory he has acquired. He cannot confirm or deny it. He is unsure. Uncertainty is not favourable. There are too many thoughts. He expects pain. He would prefer pain. There are too many thoughts. 

They are not real. He would prefer to comply. He would prefer to feel something real. He would prefer something right. He would prefer to comply. 

It is not too late. He can still go back. 

But he stays. 

Until someone tells him to come with them. He goes because he would prefer orders to all the thoughts. They do not add up. They do not add up in a way that makes sense. They are too close to him. He is too attached. There are too many thoughts. He must be adding them up wrong. He would prefer pain. 

He would like to comply now. 

-

He did not eat anything they gave to him. But there are no bugs in this dormitory, so he stays, and he stays awake well into the early morning. He can tell it is morning despite the fact is is dark because he is awake. It makes sense to him in the context of his permitted sleeping pattern. 

Born in the USA. 

I was born in the USA. He hums the tune and it comes out sounding wrong. He squeezes his eyes shut and muffles the sound of it with a pillow that smells of men. He cannot deny what he cannot hear. He is not a man. 

But that cannot stop him from thinking. Just like the compressed poison gas his rage is akin to, the thoughts cannot be contained – but they are more like a great river, opposed by a cracking damn. 

The blanket cannot cover him. It cannot cover the sheer mass of things that he has done. It cannot cover the number of years he has missed, nor the ones he has been active. It cannot cover all the people he has killed, and that he has lost. He feels them, like a physical weight – he doesn’t know who they are, or why they’re there, but he knows they’re there. 

Right now they itch all over. They tingle just under his skin, where he can’t get to them. He was wrong, before. He is made of metal. But not black material, or leather, or laces, or concealed blades, though they are intrinsically part of him. 

He is also made of pasty, translucent white skin. Blue veins are underneath it and he wonders if the ice penetrated too deep. There are crystals of it stuck in his circulation. It explains the chills and the shivering and the cold sweat. It is not the warm blue. It is the cold blue. 

The skin is sickly, and prickles, irritated by the memories he can’t quite grasp at. A hand he cannot quite catch – even to save his own life. Even to protect someone very, very important. 

_Bucky!_

. . . There it is again. Who was he protecting? . . . He has never protected anyone but himself, his whole life. 

And yet, at this moment, he is attempting to scratch the memory out. His right arm itches, and itches, and _itches_ , the phantom tingling making him cringe and twitch and grunt. His metal hand does not have fingernails, and his right hand cannot reach the itch. 

The blanket itches more, and it feels as if a thousand insects are crawling over him. 

They are not insects – they are people. A million people staring, their gazes prickling his skin, and their hands tugging, each demanding a pound of flesh. It’s less than they deserve. 

Winter Soldier? 

Winter Soldier? 

Winter Soldier? 

_Bucky!_

Winter Soldier? 

It’s all they ask, over and over, ensuring his correct response; making sure he is ready to comply.

Winter Soldier? 

He doesn’t know why. It’s his name. He already knows it. They already told him. But there’s maybe one voice that can tell him something he doesn’t know. 

_That kid from Brooklyn_ , he hears, and he itches his neck with his right hand. He feels stubble there – too much growth, too much, not regulation – _Brooklyn. Brooklyn. The Steven G. Rogers Museum of Wartime History_. It’s not history, it is still happening. It revolves and restarts, and all are trapped. He is trapped. He cannot say no. He must comply. He is trapped and confined and it is not his choosing.

 _Brooklyn. Brooklyn. Bucky! Winter Soldier? Winter Soldier? Winter Soldier?_ He can hear a whisper under the shouting, and it’s maddening: they overlaid every single other thing with themselves – with what they want him to be, need him to be; the Winter Soldier. 

They’re shouting, and so is he. He’s not sure if he’s begging them to come back, and take him, and make it all go away – or if he wants them to get out, _get out of my head, it’s my head, get out, no, please, stop, get it off, get it off, get it off, I don’t want it, get it off_

Someone tugs the blanket away, and now it isn’t even pretending to cover him, and hide him from everything; hide everything from him. He grabs the person by the throat, teeth bared. His eyes are wide and dark and animalistic as he threatens the man’s life. 

He’s an inch away from snapping his neck, when he registers that this is the man who was previously sleeping beside him, in the next bed. The man who arrived at the same time as the Winter Soldier. 

He lets go. The man pauses, and asks him something. The Winter Soldier considers what he says for a moment, though he hears the man’s words as if through water – distorted, unclear, obscured – warm blue, not ice. Not ice. 

He finds that, yes, there is blood on his neck – under his fingernails – but not on his right arm. He cannot scratch that itch. The man seems upset by that, too, eyeing his metal arm with a mix of shock and horror. The man is very upset. He asks if there is anything he can do. 

Do you know what happened? I saw flowers. I saw daffodils, and sunflowers, and forget-me-nots. They were harmless and they said thank you and welcome home. 

The man cannot answer. He suspects it is because his voice is tainted with European tongues. He cannot remember what it sounded like unsullied. He tries again. 

The Steven G. Rogers Museum of Wartime History. 

The man considers it, and tells him, yes – yes, Captain America. He saved the world, with the other Avengers. Not long after they found him alive, either. What a guy. 

What a guy. He stares blankly at the man, urging him to continue. The man is hesitant – he is looking at the metal arm again. 

He notices his arm moving without his say-so, flipping a knife it procured from under the pillow. He is asked if maybe he would like to leave. He complies. 

-

Blood under his fingernails. He has not washed them since he made the death of the man whose clothes he has stolen look accidental. The water was warm blue. The rain is neither warm nor blue but at least it is not ice. 

Cold and grey. Cold, and grey – the barrel of a pistol, pressed to a forehead. The barrel of a sniper rifle, aimed at the base of a skull. The barrel of a revolver, pressed to his temple. _Stand down._

There is no one else present. It is 4:35 am because they say it is. They cite the time to one another as they approach. No one is watching. It is 4:35 am. No one is there to witness the scene outside the Steven G. Rogers Museum of Wartime History. The museum is not open until 9:00. It takes up the whole building. No one is there to watch. 

Not the curtain twitcher in 3B and not the suspicious middle-aged couple in 5A and not Mrs. Taylor next door who used to bake for them and not Stevie, the dumb kid from Brooklyn. They are all long gone, bar one. Maybe he will walk past his museum, or see it on the news. Maybe he will see the blood on the sidewalk and hear about the gunshots and wonder sadly to himself at the world he came back to.

He would have liked to go inside just one more time, and to the museum, maybe. He could have gotten inside, but it would have drawn too much attention. It doesn’t matter now because they found him anyway. What he wants doesn't matter because he is not supposed to want anything. 

It is 4:37 am, and he is instructed to stand down. He was ready to comply but now he is unsure so he takes out his pistol and shoots one of them dead, and then a second. He is unsure if this was the right move. He looks to their CO for confirmation. He does not show approval outwardly but then perhaps he cannot afford to be overt. 

Thank you Cap for defending us from the Nazis. Bang. Thank you Cap for defending us from Hydra. Bang, bang. Click. Whirr. Click. Click. Click. Thank you Cap for keeping our streets safe. Thud. Crack. Thud. Thank you Bucky for giving your life. You’re in a better place now. Bang. Click. Thud. Maybe those words were for him. 

He fights like a fucking rabid dog, doesn’t he? 

No. Dogs have a personality. And we can put them down. This one took way too much time and effort just to shoot. Get the taser. 

Easy. Easy. 

I think he pissed himself. 

Urgh. Put him in the back. We can deal with it later. Wouldn’t be the first time they’ve put him back in stinking of that – and worse. 

Yeah, remember that time we decided we could have – oh, I almost forgot. The arm. You want to do the honours? 

Nah. Doesn’t make him make that face like it used to. You know the one. 

Yeah. Those were the days. Shit, it’s not the same anymore. I’ve got to fuckin retire. 

Right. 

-

The decision has been made to keep the asset in stasis in between missions, and allow him to be revived for missions only. All training duties and missions on US soil have been ruled out for at least two years. During the final phase of the plan, the asset will be utilised again, but other than that, it should be used sparingly. He only knows this because he overheard it. He connects these words, somehow, to himself. 

He is pushed back, and the stump on his left aches and groans. There are hooks embedded within it. They have grown in. They have been cared for but they still hurt, especially when they attach the part of him made of articulated metal. He doesn’t even notice anymore. 

He is strapped down, and he knows what happens next, but he cannot ever think not to comply. It does not occur to him that he can say no despite the fact he is terrified. He is a trapped animal. They are bullies. 

_I don’t like bullies_. Not his voice, but something familiar. Someone familiar. Thank you, Cap. 

Thank you, Bucky. 

Even if these words are not meant for him, what is coming next is for him. It is only for him and it is inevitably for him and it is non-negotiable and he will comply. 

The apparatus sparks behind his head loudly, and he hums, and it finally comes out right. It is loud and it is brash and it is out of key but he does not care because it is true and it is real at least before he starts screaming and thrashing and tensing and biting down until his jaw strains and the tendons in his neck stand out like the roots of a tree and he would beg if he could but he cannot because they put something in his mouth but still he has one thought before he is gone and the whole situation is wiped from his memory. 

Born in the USA. 

I was born in the USA.

**Author's Note:**

> The mission at the start here is taken from Captain America: Winter Soldier, and the panels which detail Bucky's treatment throughout the decades by the Soviets and his brief escape from their control (+ some artistic license). 
> 
> I've also posted this on my tumblr (bucksterbarnes), come and say hi if you're into sad angsty stucky and marvel stuff uwu


End file.
